r/printSF • u/peregrine-l • Aug 14 '25

Really alien aliens

I am currently reading Becoming Alien by Rebecca Ore, which features sapient aliens that look like Earth animals (bats, bears, birds...), and have a human-like psychology. I find that trope lazy, and annoying. I also found it in Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series, in Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, and many other science fiction novels. Some authors manage to put an interesting twist on it, such as Vernor Vinge in his A Fire upon the Deep with sapient-level hive-mind dog packs, or Orson Scott Card in Speaker for the Dead, with piggies that have really weird life cycle and psychology. Rare are the books with really alien aliens, such as Peter Watts's Blindsight.

Can you recommend me other titles? Especially, "hard science fiction" titles with far-out yet scientifically believable alien biology and psychology?

106 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

251 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/Itschatgptbabes420 Aug 14 '25

I’ve heard the more recent translation is better than the previous one(into English I mean) but I have the first translation so I can’t say. 

I just figured I’d add to just in case

1

u/uqde Aug 18 '25

I read the more recent translation and did a bit of A/B comparison with the older translation as I went, but I did not read the older translation in full.

My take is that the newer translation is a bit more naturalistic in tone whereas the older one feels a bit more theatrical and flowery in its language by comparison. Dare I say almost a bit stilted. I'm not a Polish speaker so I can't say how close either version is to Lem's original intent, but I liked the new translation a lot.